Small wonder, big obsession: Why adults are turning to decorating dolls houses
These things of beauty are a joy forever, especially on Instagram.
A growing number of young people in the US, an AP report says, are getting hooked to a new hobby — building and decorating dolls’ houses.
This is no child’s play, though. This is an elaborate — and organised — business. There are websites catering specially to dolls’ house enthusiasts, selling tiny sofa sets, lamps, potted plants, bookshelves, even books, all scaled down to fit into tiny little perfect houses.
People put a lot of thought, a lot of time, and not an insignificant amount of money into creating these miniature models of perfection.
This in itself is not a new trend — dolls’ houses, and furniture and knickknacks tailor-made for them, have existed for centuries.
The difference now is social media, specifically Instagram, creating a bigger audience, and thus a bigger market, for visual content. And who are the people putting the content together? Young people stuck in jobs they don’t feel creatively satisfied in, their real lives often spinning out of control, an actual house done up to their satisfaction way out of their means.
Think about it — how many of us live in tiny apartments, decorating it one item a month? How many of us salivate over rocking chairs and console tables, knowing we can’t buy them because we are short of money, or our apartments are short of space, or both? How many of us spend hours drooling over apartment pictures on Instagram, before bidding the sweet dreams goodbye with salty tears?
Some learn to live with this ache. Others channelise it in decorating dolls’ houses.
There is another appeal behind the trend. When your own life is out of control — and our apartments are the best reflection of that: unpaid bills, unwashed dishes, un-dusted shelves — it can be really comforting to create a perfectly ordered world where things are tidy, pretty, and most importantly, easily manageable.
This is actually used in medical treatments — the famous psychologist Dr. Ruth Westheimer had a therapy dollhouse with which she helped children work pver their problems. This was based on her own experience of playing with a dollhouse, which helped her cope with the trauma of being a Jew in Nazi Germany. She later told NPR: “I had no control over my life. I did not want to leave Germany; I did not want to go to Switzerland. With the dollhouses, I have control. I put the parents, and they stay there. I put the children, and they’re going to stay there.”
And the wise women the AP report recently talked about probably realised that with real estate prices being what they are, dolls’ houses are possibly the closest they will get to doing up a home.
India, however, does not seem to have a similar craze for dolls’ houses. Many of us built gharaundas for Diwali and decorated them, but it was a seasonal thing.
‘Kitchen sets’ and dolls were ubiquitous, but an actual, elaborate house for a doll was probably rather far-fetched in a country where ‘housing for all’ still remains an attractive poll promise.
We Indians like to spend money on tangible things — a miniature potted plant or sofa set, which a child would promptly lose, or maybe swallow, would not seem value for money to middle-class sensibilities.
Dolls houses, though, weren’t originally meant for children, or for playing. They were for wealthy women, who would decorate them as proof of their abilities and aesthetics. In that sense, dolls houses have come full circle — from adults to adults, though possibly of a less wealthy variety.
Here’s a fun fact, though: one of the more expensive dolls’ houses of the world, now displayed at Windsor Castle, originally belonged to Queen Mary. It was designed by architect Edwin Lutyens, who also happened to design portions of our national capital. It's not known if either inspired the other.